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Dessert

Tutti-frutti in Bowls

A chilled fruit salad of grapefruit, bananas, grapes, strawberries, sugar, and a splash of sherry, claret, or rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and grape work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Tutti-frutti in Bowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the fruit from the halves of the grapefruit and place the emptied peels in ice water.

  2. Cut the grapefruit pulp, bananas, and strawberries into small cubes.

  3. Skin, halve, and seed the white grapes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Wipe the bowls made of the peels and fill them with the fruit, sprinkling sugar among the fruits as you add them.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of sherry, claret, or rum, and set in ice until served.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Grapefruit + grapetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).

  3. Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Banana + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Grapefruit + bananatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapefruit
Its peel forms the serving bowls, and its pulp adds tart, juicy fruit to the salad.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out some juice as it sits.
Bananas
Add soft, sweet body and a creamy texture to the mixed fruit.
Ripe strawberries
Contribute sweet flavour, colour and juicy texture.
White grapes
Add mild sweetness and a firm, juicy bite.

The step that matters

Add the sherry, claret, or rum and chill on ice. Alcohol adds aroma and flavour that spreads through the fruit as it sits. Keeping the salad cold slows browning of cut bananas and softening of the fruit before serving.

Swap the grapefruit

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, grape, sugar, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Grapefruitthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, grape, sugar, sherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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